got a figure sitting and the dress looks like crud. what the best way to make the "fabric" flow around the legs? 

does the dress have handles?
if so move them
does the dress have movement morphs?
if so move them
it's all just trial and error til you get what you want.
some skirts and dress skirts work better than others,
alot of times i hide the skirt of one dress and use anouther because it has sit down morphs built in.

You can also change the conforming dress to a dynamic one and clotify it.  This is the most realistic-looking option, I think.  Just export the confoming skirt as a wavefront OBJ (select just the skirt and no handles) then import it back to the sceen, fit it and parent it to your zero-posed character then go to the cloth room and animate it to your desired pose.  Obviously it's a bit more trouble, but I find that trying to dial in morphs and working to get conforming clothes to fit and look right can often be even more time-consuming.

If you haven't used the cloth room it is worth the effort to learn.  Look here for more info.

or if it's got a hip part then just clothify that in the cloth room rather than doing the whole export/import thing

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